


Building a Mystery

by IceQueen1



Category: Magnum P.I. (TV 2018)
Genre: Between episodes 1x08 and 1x09 but not much in the way of spoilers, Gen, Mentions of Past Torture, Mentions of Prisoners of War, Poor Thomas, Sort Of Fluff, but I love him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 00:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16691893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceQueen1/pseuds/IceQueen1
Summary: Juliet Higgins prides herself on her ability to read people, which is why her inability to get a read on Thomas Magnum frustrates her to no end. Sure, she could look it up, but somehow that seems rude - so she goes to the next best thing for intel: his friends.Set between episodes 1x08 and 1x09 in an attempt to explain why Higgins looked like she knew about Magnum's time as a POW and why Rick so easily mentioned how bad it was for Thomas at the prison camp.





	Building a Mystery

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for episode 1x09 - sort of. This was already half written when the episode aired, and I was so worried I was going to be off the mark with my head canon for what Magnum was like as a prisoner that I didn't think it would ever be finished. But then HA! I was pretty darn close. This is to explain Higgins' sort of cagey answer when Magnum asks her if she knew they were held by the Taliban, because to me, it totally sounded like she knew way more than anything she would find on paper. Anyway, this is my first attempt at a Magnum fic (and a fandom based in reality - unlike all my sci-fi shows). Oh - while I've seen every episode, I've only seen them once when they aired, so this is accurate to the best of my knowledge (I don't think they mentioned how Robin met the group, or exactly what he was doing in Afghanistan doing ride alongs, so I made up a sensible reason [for me], and I honestly don't remember how Rick refers to Higgins - first name or last). Anyway. ONWARDS!

Juliet Higgins wasn’t an idiot. Far from it. She spoke several languages with an ease normally reserved for native speakers. She knew multiple forms of self-defense. She could field strip a Sig Sauer P226 and reassemble it in less than a minute. She could find the proverbial needle in a digital haystack on the Dark Web. The amount of random bits of information that stuck with her from childhood to now was staggering – everything from how to properly serve tea to the Queen of England, the years of Picasso’s Blue Period, the exact speed at which to ascend from skin diving to avoid the Bends, the final words of Anna Sewell’s  _Black Beauty_ , the correct way to set a table for a four course meal, and how to make Crepês Suzette. And at the risk of sounding arrogant, give her 20 minutes and she could probably figure out exactly what needed to be done to save the world in any given crisis (barring the current state of political affairs in her adopted nation of the United States –  _no one_  was  _that_  good).

But for the love of mercy, she  _could not_  understand Thomas Magnum.

On the surface, the man was as uncomplicated as you could get. The term ‘beach bum’ came to mind when she thought of him. He stayed out late, slept even later, seemed barely computer literate, handed out the codes to the estate to every Harry Hardluck and Sally Sobstory on the island and wrecked almost everything he touched – from Ferraris to blenders.

When Robin Masters first told her that he’d hired a live-in security consultant to live in the guest house at the Nest, she was mildly insulted. It wasn’t like she’d been overwhelmed with her duties as majordomo, and she was hardly defenseless. Kumo handled the cultural tours of the estate, and Zeus and Apollo were more than adequate support for the perimeter fence. She didn’t need  _help_.

 “You’ll like Magnum,” Robin assured her when she pointed out she hardly needed aid. “Everybody does.”

Maybe if he hadn’t said it that way, she’d have been more… _receptive_  to the idea of Magnum. But being assured that  _everyone likes him, so you will, too_ , did nothing but make her resolve to  _not_  like him on principle.  

Perhaps it was a terrible personality quirk of hers, but it was based on experience. The more someone insisted she would like something, the more resistant she was, because she didn’t trust others’ instincts half as much as her own. Maybe it was because being a woman, she knew how fast guys could go from ‘how’s it going’ to violent threats after a polite decline of not being interested. Maybe it was because she knew how charming third world dictators could be, or how easily someone could go from affable and charismatic to homicidal.

Her job did not lend itself to taking others at their word.

She was given the bare minimum of information about her new charge – because she had no doubt that’s exactly what he was going to wind up being – and given his arrival date and that was pretty much her entire knowledge of the man that would be sharing the estate with her.

She knew he was flying in from the mainland. Detroit, to be exact. That he was one of the soldiers Masters met while he was in Afghanistan, recently discharged from service. And she knew he, as well as his two friends, were the ones Masters based his wildly popular  _White Knight_  series on.

She hadn’t bothered to read the books until now, and after reading just the first few chapters of book one, she was more resolved than ever in her stance to not like Magnum. If he was anything like the character in the book, he was arrogant, a womanizer, and completely full of crap. No one could pull off half of what was described in the books, even if Masters had embellished with the creative license.

She was expecting…well, she wasn’t entirely sure what she was expecting. But the picture in her mind compared to the man who showed up on the doorstep of the Robin’s Nest three weeks after Robin informed her he was coming was embarrassingly off base.

 Thomas Magnum had a ready and easy smile, laid back and go with the flow personality that Juliet found more commonly in native born Hawaiians than Mainlander expatriates and he was unlikely to be called out as a  _haole_  (something she still struggled with). He was shorter than she expected – she didn’t exactly tower over anyone at less than five and a half feet tall, but she was used to having to crane her neck to look most men in the eye. And he looked  _young_. He was probably still carded at the liquor store.

And damn Robin for being right, she  _immediately_  wanted to like him, which made her all the more determined to keep her distance and her walls up and to let him know in no uncertain terms,  _she_  was the one who ran the Nest in Robin’s absence, and she had no need for a guest house security consultant.

In the early days, she kept her distance. Other than to give him grief over the amount of people he gave out the gate code to (though she did admit not having to buzz in Magnum’s three closest friends who might as well have moved in with him was rather nice), or in her less charitable moods, sic Zeus and Apollo on him, she had little interaction with him.

Not that it stopped her from noticing some of his rather odd behaviors.

Magnum  _loved_  the rain.

Most people seemed to forget the rainforest part of Hawaii and that it rained at least a little every day. Tourists often complained that it wasn’t 100% sunny 100% of the time, but Magnum relished it. Sometimes he would purposely find something to do in the rain – like take the paddleboard or kayak out, but mostly he just stood at the edge of the beach, his face turned up, hands in his pockets and soaked it in like most soaked up the sun.

He seemed to enjoy being flat broke.

On more than one occasion, she’d walked in on Rick and TC or even Nuzo complaining about Magnum never offering to pay for anything, or being short his part of a bill, or some other variation of being low on cash. She’d found his investigator rates online, and her jaw nearly hit the floor when she realized he charged less than a fraction of even the most incompetent of investigators on the island. He let people pay him in fish. Groceries. Tickets to a concert that he didn’t go to. While he seemed to enjoy the perks of living large at the Nest – like driving the Ferrari, living rent free in a guest house larger than most  _main_  houses on the island – she got the distinct impression that if he suddenly had none of those things, he’d hardly miss a beat. Sure, he complained when  _she_  tried to restrict his usage of things, but it always seemed on principle rather than actual need.

The one thing he spent money on was his pistol.

Despite his generally passive nature, with the few good-natured arguments interspersed here and there, Magnum carried a STI Costa Carry Comp, which retailed at almost four thousand dollars, and it was one of the few things that he owned instead of borrowed. Even if he hardly ever seemed to use it.

He seemed okay with taking more than a few hits.

Juliet would swear under oath more often than not, Magnum returned from the end of a case sporting injuries. Broken ribs from getting hit by a car. Black eye from getting punched by a client’s angry ex. Mild concussions and bruises shaped like boots across his torso. Thrown through a wall – or two. He  _could_  fight – she’d seen him do it. But he was never going to be the ‘throw the first punch’ type of guy, and he was almost always against a larger opponent. Juliet knew from bitter personal experience that yes, size  _does_  matter when it comes to fighting.

Magnum would rather people think he’s incompetent until he proved otherwise.

She knew he did it on purpose. That god-awful hunt-and-peck thing he called ‘typing’ – she’d heard him type away at 100 words a minute when he thought he was alone. Pretending not to know he was as obvious as a nuclear explosion in the rear view of anyone he was tailing with a bright red Ferrari. She had a sneaky suspicion he understood more languages than he let on – he looked like he followed the conversation in the car well enough when they’d been kidnapped investigating a  _tuna_  of all things, and seemed to bungle his way through a case seemingly relying as much on luck as actual skill, and yet solved cases faster than the HPD could call in those yahoos that called themselves Five-O.

In short, Thomas Sullivan Magnum was an enigma within a riddle, wrapped up in one giant mystery.

One that she had woefully misjudged and found herself wanting to understand.

 

* * *

 

 

Of all people on the island, Juliet Higgins was somewhere near the bottom of the list of people Rick expected to see at the King Kamehameha club, falling in between the Abominable Snowman and Vladimir Putin.

To be perfectly honest, he thought she’d look out of place anywhere there was fun. She reminded him too much of some cross between Mary Poppins and James Bond – the Daniel Craig version, not Sean Connery: perfectly capable in every way but had a relatively low opinion of most others until they proved deserving otherwise.

Stranger still was seeing her at the club hours before it opened, which meant she wasn’t coming for the club, she was coming to talk to him. As much as he enjoyed the fantasy of him and her together, he knew it was just that.  

Which begged the question of: “What are you doing here, Higgins?” he asked, putting down the inventory list he’d been amending, slapping a wide smile he didn’t quite feel on his face.

He liked Higgins. She was smart, she had a wicked dry sense of humor, and he knew there was a wealth of things he still didn’t know about her but were probably terrifying. He’d just come to dread any time her name came up on his phone because it meant Magnum was in trouble.

Again.

And that man didn’t do  _anything_ by halves. Never was it ‘Magnum has a flat’ it was ‘Magnum has been taken hostage by a rogue FBI double agent and taken out to sea, likely to be murdered if he hasn’t been already’.

Rick did  _not_  need any more gray hairs courtesy of Thomas Magnum.

She slid into the booth opposite him, returning an equally false but polite smile.

He didn’t immediately say anything, waiting for the bad news, but instead of her normal cut-to-the-chase-Magnum-needs-you, she looked…nervous. Fidgety. Like she wasn’t entirely sure how to say what clearly needed to be said.

Oh  _no_.

“How bad is it this time?” he asked, bracing for it, trying to think if there was anything worse that Thomas hadn’t already gone through. Hit by a car. Kidnapped. Chased through the woods by some whacko with a crossbow. Shot. Captured by enemy combatants and tortured for more than a year while he and TC and Nuzo were stuck behind bars and unable to do anything about it except patch him up afterwards.

Dead. He could be  _dead_.  _That_  would be worse.

He didn’t even notice his hand tightening on the clipboard to the point his knuckles were turning white, but Higgins did, and she immediately shook her head.

“No,  _no_ , sorry – sorry, it’s nothing bad. Magnum’s fine. I think he was still sleeping when I left the Nest, actually,” she hurriedly apologized, shaking her head. “My apologies. Given what I normally come see you for, I should’ve assumed you’d think the worst and lead with that.”

While the vice that had gripped his heart slowly released its hold, Rick couldn’t help but frown in confusion.

“Not that I don’t like seeing you, Higgy, but uh…if it’s not Magnum, what are you doing here? Club isn’t open yet, and even if it was, I didn’t think this was really your…scene.”

Higgins shifted slightly in her seat, her fingers playing with the golden chain around her neck. “It’s not  _not_  about Magnum, it’s just…he’s not in trouble or anything, but I…” she trailed off, her pale cheeks flushing pink from embarrassment.

He supposed he should help a lady out and tell her just to spit it out, but it was such a foreign concept for  _anything_  to rattle the former British operative that he instead found himself openly staring.  

Higgins huffed out a breath, visibly composing herself as she placed her folded hands on the table in front of her. “I want to ask you about Magnum.”

Rick raised an eyebrow. All that rigmarole just to ask about Thomas? He doubted it. “What about him?” It was a little hard for him to believe that with her cyber skills and connections in various places she couldn’t find out whatever she wanted to know about him.

Higgins smiled faintly at that. “A simple question for a not so simple man,” she mused, almost too quiet for Rick to hear.

Oh. He’d wondered how long it would take Higgins to ask what everyone inevitably asked.

“You can find out pretty much anything you want to know just through a background search with your spy buddies. Why not just look him up like you do with everyone else?” he asked.

For a moment, Juliet said nothing, and Rick patiently waited for an answer. Depending on what came next was going to determine if he one, lied, or two, told her to get lost.

“It may sound strange to you, given how Magnum and I get along about as well as cats and dogs…but it seems  _rude_  to just look up his history. He’s clearly not ready or willing to tell me his story, and he doesn’t  _need_  to. But I would like to understand him. If I just run a background check, I’ll just get data. Solid facts and figures that don’t really explain why he is the way he is, and it’ll be more than I need. I don’t need  _everything_  about him…and a friend would know what matters, what he would or wouldn’t want me to know, and the  _why_.” Higgins smiled sheepishly, which was just a strange look on her, given her confidence in everything she said and did, but at least she was being honest. She was respectful enough not to blatantly lie with something like ‘Well, I couldn’t find anything’ (which she wouldn’t have – unless she hacked into the NIOC records, and even British intelligence wasn’t  _that_  good).

 He considered it for a long moment. Thomas wasn’t exactly  _against_  anyone knowing their history. Parts of it were pretty public – but that was several years ago, and an equal amount of the story was kept private as it was made public. None of them were eager to reopen old wounds for kicks and giggles.

For her part, Higgins waited patiently for an answer, looking sincere but not over-eager. Maybe that was part of the reason he made the decision he did.

Mostly, though, it was because he wanted someone else to know warning signs if things went south.

“Tell you what,” Rick said, closing the inventory book and pushing it to one side of the table. “I’m not gonna answer everything. Knowing Thomas, he’ll eventually tell you anyway, even if it’s not a sit-down-and-talk-about it way. But I’m guessing something brought you here – something specific – today. So, what was it?”

“Why does he pretend to be so bloody incompetent?” she blurted out, almost before he’d finished talking. “I mean, he clearly  _isn’t_. There’s an IQ requirement for SEALs, and he clearly made it. And I’m not sure if he’s lazy – which doesn’t make any sense because he was a SEAL and the few I met afield were hardly what I call  _slackers_ , or if he genuinely has no idea how to be an investigator without relying on some divine intervention and luck, or – or…” she threw her hands up in frustration.

Rick held it together for all of ten seconds after her tirade before he burst out laughing, which made Higgins look at him like he’d lost his mind, which made him laugh even harder.

After a minute, tears in his eyes, Rick finally managed to take a breath. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry – it’s just that  _everyone_  asks that. He’s not lazy  _or_ incompetent. I mean, if one of us could do everything on our own, it would be him. But he doesn’t like to, so he figures out any way he can to involve others.”

Juliet frowned at that. “So you’re telling me that Magnum  _pretends_  to need help because he’s…bored?”

Rick snorted. “No, because  _you_  are.”

 _That_  made her pause.

“Think about it. Were you really all that happy just being a glorified property manager at an empty mansion for a billionaire who hasn’t been home in like…four years?” he asked. “You were former MI-6. You don’t think maybe you were a little overqualified for a house keeper, and you were just a bit bored? You really think Thomas is there as a  _security_  consultant for the most heavily fortified private estate on the island who has  _you_  as the majordomo? Twenty bucks says Robin invited him to stay there because he knew Thomas would suck you into whatever he had going on because that’s what he does to  _everyone_.”

He could see she wasn’t sold just yet – still on that edge of not quite pissed off, but not happy either.

“Look. He doesn’t do it as some malicious sort of manipulation. You’ve met the guy – does he really seem like he would do that? We’re not idiots. We know that if you really didn’t want to do something, no one could make you. But you’re not exactly what I’d call ‘retirement age’. Even if you act like it annoys you, I’m betting running around the island chasing bad guys is a lot more interesting – and meaningful – than dusting curios at the Nest.”

He could see the rigidity of her shoulders finally start to lessen, the taut tension of her clenched jaw relax as she considered the information. “Did he do that with you and TC, too? Before you came to the Island?”

Rick shrugged. “Eh, it was kind of a mutual thing. He knew Nuzo back in Coronado, we wound up on the same bases at the same time, saved their asses more times than either of them would admit – and we just kept getting sent to the same places. I don’t think any of us really knew why he and Nuzo were always partnered up with our group instead of with the other SEAL teams, and we just never asked. Never seemed to really matter. Here, I guess it just sort of continued on. Police have a department to lean on for help, Thomas has us. And I know, at least for me, I would prefer that he  _keep_  calling us for help when he needs it, rather than try and do it on his own. When we were prisoners –” he cut himself off abruptly.

Higgins offered an understanding smile. “You don’t have to tell me about it. I can probably hazard a guess that Magnum was far from a model prisoner.”

It was enough permission to segue into another topic.  _Any_  other topic.

“Anything else you want to know?”

Fortunately, Higgins took a hint better than most and easily switched tracks. “Why the rain?”

He doubted she meant to pick another subject so closely linked to their time as POW’s, but it made him reflexively flinch nonetheless. Taking a page out of Thomas’s book, he answered without really answering. “Afghanistan is a subarctic mountain climate with little rainfall. The rain is a reminder he isn’t there anymore.”

He knew exactly what she meant by the rain. When they were held prisoner, they were kept indoors, underground, in tiny, cramped and filthy cages not big enough to stand, and not long enough to lie down.

Compared to where Thomas spent most of his time, it was practically the Ritz.

When American forces – or any of their allies – got too close to the camp they were in, they were moved. Sometimes shoved into the back of trucks, sometimes forced to march at gunpoint over terrain vehicles couldn’t make it over. More than half the time, Thomas had to be carried, and it wasn’t the Taliban that did it. It was the only time they were ever outside in those 18 months.

And every time, Thomas had a blindfold or hood over his head, with the threat of losing his hands if he or anyone else touched it.

There was, on average, less than a foot of rainfall the entire year in Afghanistan. But when it did, it came in the form of Indian monsoons if they were in the south western regions, and hardly at all anywhere else. The rain was their only real way of guessing the time of the year – and how long they were held captive.

For Thomas, it was the only time they let him outside.

Dragged was the more accurate term, because they thought it was punishment for him, to pull him out of his solitary confinement  _pit_  and hurl him out in the rain – and since rainy season was January, it  _was_  punishment. Prime hypothermic conditions under the best circumstances, Thomas was left in the rain for as long as it lasted, until his lips turned blue and his skin looked like that of a corpse and he no longer shivered. Then they would drag him back inside and threw him in the cages with the rest of them and ordered keep him alive without supplies – as if they needed to be told.

Rick  _hated_  the rain.

And Thomas  _loved_  it. Because that damn man would find a silver lining to a nuclear apocalypse.

When it rained, he was returned to his friends.

Something must have shown on his face, because Higgins didn’t press any further.

“One last question…if I may,” she asked quietly.

“Shoot.”

“How did you meet Robin?”

“Masters was working as war journalist, I think. I don’t know how else he would’ve gotten on base in Kandahar. He met Thomas before he met us, so I don’t really know how their first meeting went down. But he wasn’t allowed off the base without an escort, and after the third or fourth ride out, he started specifically asking to go with us.” Rick shrugged. “I think it’s because we talked to him instead of acting like he was invisible or an unwanted chore. Sharing stupid stories back and forth, telling him about gigs we had even before the Sandbox, and honestly, he just  _really_  hit it off with Thomas. I just wanted to be left out of the books, but Thomas insisted that we were…”  _what the hell was it Thomas called them?_  “Integral characters to the plot,” he said, making air quotes around the description.

He reached for the glass of water near his elbow, using it as a convenient delay tactic in what was starting to feel like an interrogation.

“I tried reading one of the White Knight series before Thomas arrived,” Juliet confessed. “Mr. Masters told me the main character was based on Magnum and I wanted to see what I was getting into.”

Rick, in almost cartoon form, spat half the water back out and choked on the rest of it. He waved off Juliet’s offer for help, wildly aware of the fact he was probably the color of a beet hacking up a lung.

“You…based your opinion…on Magnum,” he wheezed, sounding like a squeaky toy, his hand over his mouth as he continued to cough, “on Robin’s  _book_?”

Juliet pushed a napkin towards him as he fought to get his breathing back under control. “I’m not proud of it, but in fairness, it was all the intel I had on him at the time.”

“ _Jeez_ , what did you think of  _us_?” At least the White Knight character was physically similar to Thomas – except for the height, if he remembered correctly. For whatever reason, Robin made the character a towering giant at 6’4”, but he and TC were usually relegated to background comic relief like some corny 80’s show. Nuzo at least got to be promoted – in the story, anyway – and kept as a mentor figure that usually wound up chewing the other characters out once they’d gotten back from their various stupid stunts.

She shrugged, her cheeks turning pink except he doubted she was blushing from embarrassment. More like the strain of trying not to laugh at his near-death experience at the nefarious hands of spring water. “No, actually it’s almost worse than that, of you can believe it. When Robin first informed me about him, he said ‘you’ll like him. Everyone likes him’. And I’ve been told that more often than I can count, and never once has it been true, and its sort of become a habit to immediately dislike anyone someone tells me that about.”

Rick raised an eyebrow. “Thomas irritates the shit out of everyone he comes across.” Well, until they got to know him. And if he liked them. Thomas had this uncanny, kind of creepy knack for getting intel out of people without  _actually_  asking for it. He insisted that people were much more likely to talk if they were angry and they were trying to correct you, rather than you accusing them or telling them what you already knew. Because he was a quiet and unassuming, most people never knew he was Navy intelligence until it was too late, and they’d given them everything he needed to know.

The loveable little shit also tended to use it to draw attention to himself and way from the others when they were imprisoned.

But then again, like he’d told her already, Robin and Magnum just immediately hit it off. Of course he would think that was what Thomas was like for everyone.

Juliet snorted indelicately at that. “I suppose. I’m sure part of it is just my personality clashing with his – I  _like_  order and discipline and things a certain way. He seems…” she struggled for a polite phrase. “Well adjusted to island life.”

“Yeah. You could say that. But look, Higgy – if you want to know about Thomas, you can probably just ask him.” He immediately thought better of that particularly broad spectrum and amended it. “Most things. If he doesn’t want to talk about it, he won’t, and that’ll be the end of that. He’s not gonna get mad about you asking questions. And look – I know you came here with good intentions. Magnum can be a little… _trying_  at times, and I’m honestly more than a little grateful he’s not out at the Nest alone. You may not like him, but I think you keep an eye on him when we can't, and he needs that.  _But.”_  He met her eyes, all trace of humor gone. “If I find out you use this information  _against_  him, no force between Heaven and Hell is gonna save you.”

Juliet didn’t blink or even flinch. Her solemn eyes met his glare and he knew she understood exactly what he’d entrusted her with. “On that, Mr. Wright, I believe we can agree.”  

 

**Author's Note:**

> So...what'd you think? Like it, love it, loathe it, needs improvement? I like hearing from the fandom (because this fandom so deserves the love). A lot of the details are purposely fudged - I have Navy experience, but obviously wasn't a SEAL (though I knew a fair amount of them) or a Marine (I knew considerably fewer of them and mostly chopper pilots). If you like this one, I'm giving serious thought to writing an entire prequel about their time in Taliban camp (because I also totally have a head canon about Magnum's former fiance - I think she either turned out to be a double agent that wound up getting them captured, or she was someone back home that had no clue about OPSEC and let it slip that her fiance was in Navy Intelligence and in Afghanistan and that's how they got caught - totally based off Rick's comment about how he and TC didn't blame Magnum for something involving her, and I don't know what else that would be). Whew. Anyway - leave a review if you're feeling it or would be interested in more! Feel free to swing by and drop me a line on Tumblr @disappearinginq!


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